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Re:Economics of Orbital vs. Terrestrial Data Centers by zokier on Monday December 15, 2025 @05:55PM (#46282027)
tbh this feels lot like people throwing Drake equation around. You put in whatever random numbers together and you can get any result you want.
Re:Economics of Orbital vs. Terrestrial Data Centers by SyzygyRhythm on Monday December 15, 2025 @06:16PM (#46282284)
We know the upper bound for most of those numbers. SpaceX already achieves internal marginal launch costs of ~$1000/kg, for instance. We know their rough costs per satellite. In contrast, we know little to nothing about the inputs to the Drake equation.

The numbers don't quite work out in favor of orbital datacenters at the current values. But we can tell from analyses like this what has to change to get there.

Re:Economics of Orbital vs. Terrestrial Data Centers by ted_dunning on Monday December 15, 2025 @06:49PM (#46282703)
You use of the word "quite" is highly "innovative".
Re:Economics of Orbital vs. Terrestrial Data Centers by enderfusion on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @12:26AM (#46285100)
OP here. Thanks SyzygyRhythm
Re:Economics of Orbital vs. Terrestrial Data Centers by BonoboIO on Monday December 15, 2025 @06:27PM (#46282439)
The cooling and density challenges of datacenters here on earth are not trivial , but in space this is multiple magnitudes more difficult.

These numbers are just random bullsh*t numbers.

And what problems do orbital datacenters solve? They still need uplink, so not libertarian we can do what we want, you have no jurisdiction here thing.

This is just a sci-fi idea that is theoretically possible and is riding the ai bubble for users and investors that don’t know better.